Claressa Shields advanced to the women’s boxing middleweight final Wednesday, guaranteeing the 17-year-old from Flint, Mich., at least a silver medal and giving the U.S. its first shot at a boxing gold at these games.

In a scrappy bout also featuring Marina Volnova of Kazakhstan, both fighters came out swinging and traded huge shots from the opening bell. But the ringside judges awarded Shields each of the four rounds in a 29-15 win.

Earlier Wednesday, Marlen Esparza earned a bronze medal in the flyweight category but narrowly failed to reach the gold-medal bout after a 10-8 semifinal loss to China’s Ren Cancan, the world No. 1 and top seed. Read More »

It’s the second week of the Olympics, so we’ve had enough time to get reacquainted with the sports we only watch every four years. When I played volleyball in middle school, only the serving team could score. The four-man weave discusses when the rules changed.

After the Carolina Band from the University of South Carolina makes a visit at halftime, The Trial of East Coast Bias begins. Darren Everson lays out the charges against Geoff Foster and me. Judge Adam Thompson presides from London. Plus, it can’t be a Sports Retort without a game. We make our picks for the PGA Championship.

If there were medals for athletes who endured more than they bargained for, American equestrian rider Jan Ebeling would take home the gold.

Ebeling came to the Olympics as the rider of Rafalca, the mare that is partly owned by Ann Romney, wife of presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Ann Romney was in the stands at the Olympic equestrian venue Greenwich Park on Tuesday for the second time to cheer on her horse and the U.S. team.

Because of Romney’s involvement, the German-born Ebeling has been pelted repeatedly with questions not only about his notable owner, but also about the resulting media attention brought to the sport — and the impact of that attention on the sport’s image. The smiling 53-year-old gent has become a de facto ambassador of dressage. And he is one of the few people who will have registered in both the 2012 Olympic Games and in the political calculus of the 2012 presidential election. Read More »

Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan inspired a nation of office workers to hug in the office Monday.

Buzzer beaters, walk-off home runs, late goals, time-expiring field goals: As sports fans, we can observe them at almost any level of play and get inordinately excited. Bigger stakes do increase the drama, of course, and there’s a difference between a Pop Warner game and the Super Bowl. The Olympics are something else, too, elevating these last-minute heroics into something approaching national lore, or at least material for an excellent “60 Minutes” feature in the near future. It’s enough to make anyone forgive the histrionics.

Consider the excitement after the U.S. women’s soccer team’s semifinal against Canada on Monday. “There are no official statistics kept on how many TV viewers back home had their guts wrenched or their teeth ground down to the nubs from the tension — or how that compares to the team’s wild and ultimately heartbreaking ride through the 2011 World Cup — but it’s fair to say that none of them should have been surprised,” writes the Journal’s Matthew Futterman. Led by an almost comically dominant Christine Sinclair, who collected a hat trick, the Canadians forced the Americans to play catch up for most of the game. But after a questionable call allowed Abby Wambach to score an equalizer on a penalty kick, the situation reversed itself in extra time. With just 30 seconds left before a shootout, Alex Morgan knocked in a header to send the U.S. to the final against Japan. Read More »

The players spanned a wide range of ages and skill levels, they and included a group from a local club of Muslim female cyclists. They all showed up for a free session of coaching and hitting organized by the Lawn Tennis Association, which oversees the sport’s development in the U.K., and by Tower Hamlets Tennis, a social enterprise founded by East London resident Peter Smith to improve the courts in Victoria Park and elsewhere in the diverse, impoverished borough of Tower Hamlets. Read More »

The 3-point line in Olympic basketball measures 22 feet, 2 inches. This line is significantly too close to the hoop for Kevin Durant. The U.S. men’s national team wrapped up a perfect record in group play Monday night with a rollicking 126-97 victory over Argentina in Basketball Arena, and Durant was the ringleader. The Oklahoma City Thunder superstar connected on 8-of-10 3-pointers and scored 28 points. The U.S., which extended its all-time record in Olympic pool play to 78-2, will play Australia in Wednesday’s quarterfinals. Read More »

LeBron James and the Americans try to cap an undefeated group stage against Argentina on Monday.

The Journal provides minute-by-minute analysis of Team USA’s final group-play game against Argentina. Scott Cacciola, Adam Thompson and Stu Woo offer commentary from Basketball Arena, and Ben Cohen contributes from New York.

4:37 pm (EDT)

Pregame

Adam Thompson

Welcome to the late show! People may still be at work in the U.S., but here in London, the U.S.-Argentina grudge match kicks off after the Queen's bedtime. 10:15 p.m. on a Monday? What is this, a February game between Hawaii and Long Beach State?

It most certainly is not. The Americans’ shaky showing against perennial roaring mouse Lithuania on Saturday has the basketball world wondering if today is the day the Yanks again lose their mojo. It was Manu Ginobili’s Argentina squad that became the first to down a U.S. team featuring NBA players back in 2002. (Watch this old footage of his run at that tournament for the diamond wipes alone.) Argentina did it again in the semifinals at the 2004 Athens Games -- with a pair of young U.S. stars named LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony powerless to stop them.

The stakes this time aren’t as high. Even if the U.S. loses, it will probably finish first in its group and face a very beatable Australia team in the quarterfinals Wednesday. Only an Argentinean win of 17 points or more changes that equation. Still, this game should tell us plenty about how much work the Americans are putting into this Olympic working vacation.

Kenya’s Ezekiel Kemboi dances in the dark after winning the 3,000-meter steeplechase in London.

Jamaican speed demon Usain Bolt, who generally gestures to the crowd in the shape of a lightning bolt after winning his races and setting new records, isn’t the only Olympic athlete busting a post-victory move at the London Games.

On Wimbledon’s Centre Court, tennis star Serena Williams broke out a dance known as the Crip Walk after winning the gold medal in women’s singles. U.S. gymnast Gabby Douglas did the Dougie in an interview with NBC during U.S. Olympic trials. The U.S. women’s soccer team initially did The Worm and later opted for cartwheels. And Kenyan Ezekiel Kemboi shook his groove thing and hips after winning the 3,000-meter steeplechase.

But perhaps the most notable victory move of the Olympics so far came from British distance runner Mo Farah. What on Earth is he doing? That was the question much of the crowd was asking after he emerged victorious in the 10,000 meters Saturday night. Read More »

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About The Daily Fix

Jeremy Gordon is a freelance writer who lives in Chicago. He has written for TheAtlantic.com, MTV and Prefix and occasionally Tumbles and Tweets. The last time he cried was when Steve Bartman dropped the ball.

Jared Diamond writes about sports for The Wall Street Journal. He currently serves as a beat reporter covering the New York Mets and Major League Baseball.

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